The Devil Takes Half (6 page)

The restoration of the Argentis estate had taken four years, and the family had been widely criticized for its extravagance. An iron gate decorated with bronze griffins marked the entrance. The gate stood open and Patronas drove his Citroen in and parked. Gaslight lanterns on gilded poles lined the driveway, and he could hear water splashing somewhere.

A maid answered the door. Standing beyond her was a man of about thirty.

“
I'm here about Eleni Argentis,” Patronas said, introducing himself. “Chief Officer of the Chios Police.”

“
Mother,” the man called over his shoulder. “Some policeman is here about Eleni.”

Stifling a yawn, he led Patronas through the house. Although it was early afternoon, his unshaven face was still puffy with sleep. He had a heavy gold chain around his neck, but unlike the one Petros Athanassiou wore, there was no cross attached. It was purely ornamental, an indication of wealth rather than a declaration of faith. His face was handsome, yet it had an unfinished quality about it, a lack of sharpness in the nose and chin, softness like a baby's. Patronas recognized the type. Many of the Greek ship owners had sons like this, sons who went from youth to old age without ever achieving manhood. He had a glass in his hand, and Patronas could already smell liquor on his breath.

In contrast, his mother, Titina Argentis, was meticulously dressed, her black hair pinned back severely and held in place with a small bow at the nape of her neck. A gold coin belt accentuated her thinness. Her sandals were equally fancy with little heels and more gold coins along the instep. She looked a little like the Duchess of Windsor, Patronas thought, with her dark hair and narrow face. She had the same cold and precise elegance.

He introduced himself again. “Is there someplace we could talk?”

The house was expensively furnished, every surface covered with silver knickknacks and photographs of Titina, some with her son, but most of her alone, posing on ski slopes or on a beach somewhere. None of Eleni that he could see.

Titina Argentis opened a set of French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. An old Genovese water wheel, carved out of white marble, dominated the grounds, water cascading from it into the swimming pool at its base. Beyond the pool, the land dropped away, planted with thick groves of lemon and orange trees. A high stone wall enclosed the entire estate, made of the same gold and red limestone as the house. Patronas had the sense he was in a place apart, a place out of time.

Titina Argentis sat down and motioned for him to do the same. “May I get you something? A lemonade, perhaps? Coffee?”

“
No, nothing, thank you.”

“
But it's such a hot day. You must take something. How about an orange juice?”

“
Very well then.”

She turned to her son. “Antonis, would you like one?”

“
I'm all set.” He held up his glass. “I've got water.”

“
Chief Officer, have you met my son, Antonis?” She said his name as if it meant something.

Antonis gave Patronas a lopsided grin. He had a wonderful smile, his teeth even and white, and when he smiled he radiated warmth and a kind of boyish sweetness. Patronas was sure he knew all too well the power of that smile and used it to get what he wanted from others. This one,
he has even the milk of the birds
. He was nursing whatever it was in his glass. Not water. Vodka or gin.

The next ten minutes were spent listening to Kyria Argentis instruct the maid on the best way to prepare Patronas' single glass of orange juice.
All quite unnecessary,
Patronas concluded after he'd tasted it. It was nothing special. His wife bought the same brand. It came in cartons at the supermarket.

He set his glass down, took a deep breath, and described the findings at Profitis Ilias. “The priest told me you were up there the day Eleni went missing.”

Titina Argentis signaled to the maid to put a coaster under Patronas' glass. “Yes, I dropped off a package for her.” No worry in her voice, no concern for her missing stepdaughter. From an onyx box on the table, she removed a thin cigarette and lit it with a lighter.

“
Where was the package from?”

“
England, I think. Antonis, do you remember?” Her voice was overly formal, stiff, as if she'd had elocution lessons.

Her son shook his head. In spite of the talk of blood and death, no worry here either.

“
Did you see Eleni that day? Talk to her?”

“
No. She wasn't there. I left the package on the table at the dig site and walked back to my car.”

“
Did you see her assistant, Petros Athanassiou?”

“
No. No one.”

“
You're sure?”

“
Yes. I saw the priest briefly when I first arrived. He was the only one.”

“
How did you and your stepdaughter get along?”

She concentrated on her cigarette, turning the Dunhill lighter over and over in her hand. “Eleni and I didn't see each other much after her father died. Circumstances kept us apart. I am only here on Chios two months of the year, Chief Officer. Antonis and I spend the winter season in London.”

“
Did Eleni stay here while you were away?”

“
In this house? No. She slept in the guest house or up at Profitis Ilias, that place where she worked.” Titina Argentis conveyed a great deal in the way she said ‘worked,' as if whatever Eleni had been doing was unseemly, beneath the dignity of her and her son and those people with whom she spent those winter months in London. And the chief officer was sure this attitude applied to all forms of employment, that ‘work' was somehow demeaning, that she considered the collection of a wage in any form to be embarrassing, even tawdry.

“
Antonis, how did you get along with your sister?”

“
She's not his sister,” Titina Argentis interrupted. “They were siblings by marriage only.”

Her hostility surprised him. Patronas turned back to Antonis Argentis. “So you didn't see her?”

Again, his mother answered for him. “Neither of us saw Eleni very much. I tried. You can ask Antonis. I invited her to join us in London countless times. But she always refused. ‘Work,' she told me. ‘I have to work.' ”

* * *

The guesthouse where Eleni Argentis had lived was located at the back of the estate. Antonis unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“
Whole place is hers. I'll be outside if you need anything.”

Patronas walked quickly through the house, opening and closing doors, trying to get a sense of who Eleni Argentis was. He doubted her death was a crime of passion, but who could say at this point? She'd been a beautiful woman and rich besides. The possibilities were endless. Perhaps she'd been arguing with a lover and Petros had intervened.

There was only one bed in the house with a simple white quilt draped across it. Above it hung an icon of the Virgin framed in gold. No other decoration. It was a severe space, monastic. The clothes in the closet were neatly arranged, jeans mostly and an assortment of cotton shirts. A laptop was sitting on the table in the kitchen across from a massive antique china closet that housed dishes and table linens. Patronas removed the dishes and began tapping on the wood in the back. He could tell from the design that the chest was from the last century, maybe even earlier. Occasionally these old pieces held secret compartments that had been used to hide Greek books during the time of the Ottomans. Eleni Argentis' held a packet of letters. He opened one. Written in English, the scrawl masculine and nearly illegible.

The chief officer called Papa Michalis on his cellphone. “I'm at Eleni's house and I found some letters, written in English. Do you know who she was involved with?”

“
There was someone at one time. I asked her about it once and she said, ‘I'm done with all that.' When I asked her what she meant, she went and got a journal off the shelf and read a passage to me. It was black leather and looked expensive. Sometimes she wrote wrote poetry, she said. It was after dinner and she'd had a lot of wine. I don't remember the passage exactly. It wasn't a poem, something about how ‘waiting defined women, waiting for love, waiting for life.' ”

“
What does that mean?”

“
I am a man of the cloth, Chief Officer. What do I know of women?”

After Patronas found the letters, he went through the house again, emptying out the pockets of Eleni's clothes, checking the undersides of the tables and chairs. The kitchen held nothing. He carefully inspected the lone suitcase he found in the back of the closet. After he finished, he searched the shelf for the notebook of poetry the priest had mentioned. He also gathered up Colette's autobiography, a textbook on abnormal psychology, and the laptop computer. He stuffed everything in the suitcase and carried it out of the house.

Titina Argentis was standing on the lawn, talking to her son about a car he was apparently intent upon buying. “Finished, Chief Officer?” she called.

“
This was just a preliminary search. A crime team will go through the house more thoroughly tomorrow.”

Though this displeased her, she said nothing.

“
By the way, Kyria Argentis, who inherits?”

“
I suppose I do,” she answered as if it were of no matter. Money, like working, was a thing she couldn't be bothered with. “And Antonis, of course. He was like a son to my husband. Themis adopted him formally when he was ten years old. He wanted Antonis to have his name, to inherit the business when he was gone. Antonis and my husband, they were very close.”

“
What business is that?”

“
Argentis Shipping. My husband, Themis, was one of the biggest ship owners in Greece. Now Antonis manages the company.” She said this with obvious pride.

How he could do that while drinking the day away in the house of his mother was a great puzzle. Perhaps he'd underestimated Antonis. “Your half-sister went to Harvard,” he said to Antonis. “How about you? Where'd you go to school?”

Again, his mother rushed to answer for him. “He was unable to complete his studies. He was too busy here. Themis and I wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for him.”

But Themis hadn't survived, had he? Neither had Eleni. Patronas looked at Titina Argentis with renewed interest.

But she was done with him. Turning back to Antonis, she began speaking again about the car. “But you wrecked the last one,” she said, smiling indulgently at her son, pleased by what she saw.

The son smiled back. That smile—that beguiling, disarming smile—but this time there was a hint of mischief in it, something a little disingenuous. The smile of a boy being naughty, but only a little, and sure he was going to get away with it.

“
I'll be more careful this time,” he said, sipping his drink.

The village is burning and the village whore is combing her hair.

—
Greek proverb

T
hey buried Petros Athanassiou the next morning in the cemetery behind the town. The chief officer attended the funeral out of respect for the boy's grandmother, thinking she would be forced to do this alone or at best with a neighbor in attendance and that he might lend some dignity to the proceedings, perhaps furnish her with a police escort if she wanted. But she wasn't alone. Entering the chapel, he was surprised to see a woman in her forties standing beside her, holding her hand. Marina Papoulis was also there, and Papa Michalis. Women from the Castro neighborhood were crowded around her too, talking among themselves over the priest's chanting.
They might have come out of kindness,
Patronas thought,
but more likely out of curiosity. Like those who slow down when they pass an accident. Giving voice to pity, secretly thankful they'd been spared. The great show that is death breaking up the monotony of their daily lives.

The old woman nodded to him as he pushed his way to the front. The service was brief, the priest's chanting perfunctory. At the cemetery, the old woman led the mourners forward, throwing a handful of dirt down on the coffin. It was made of cheap pine, tricked up to look like walnut and draped with plastic flowers. As she threw the dirt, she began wailing, tearing at the front of her dress. The same woman who'd been with her in the church led her away.

Patronas waited a half hour before following them back to the house. Petros' grandmother opened the door. She was still in her funeral clothes, a black dress, kerchief and stockings, as was the custom, her face ravaged with grief.

“
Come in,” she said. “Meet my daughter.”

The woman he'd seen at the funeral rose and came forward. Her black dress was too short and tight for both her age and the occasion. Her bleached hair was piled high, and Patronas could see the line along her jaw where her make-up ended. She had an air of spent voluptuousness about her.
An overripe peony,
he thought,
pretty once, but now about to make a mess on the table.
Her nose and lips were too thick, too coarse, for real beauty, and her eyes were deepset and swollen, as if from dissipation.

“
I'm Voula Athanassiou,” the woman said. “Petros' mother.” She sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her, indicating for him to join her. “My mother called me and told me what had happened,” she said. “Manos and I were staying at a hotel on the other side of the island. We came as soon as we heard.”